CBI Vs IB: Who is telling truth?

By Poonam I Kaushish

In the wee hours of 15 June 2004, 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan and three others were gunned down in a joint operation by the Gujarat police and Intelligence Bureau on the outskirts of Ahmadabad. The State Government claimed they were members of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The killing made headlines, thanks to Jahan’s tenacious mother who moved court claiming her daughter was innocent and killed in an audacious fake encounter.

Nine years later the CBI in its explosive 1500-page charge-sheet held it a fake hit and indicted seven top police officers along-with a senior IB official. Concluding that all four were abducted, kept in confinement for a month, drugged, cold bloodily murdered and evidence of a genuine encounter planted. All to get into the good books of Gujarat’s top leadership which had political sanction.

Predictably, all hell broke loose at two levels: The CBI and IB slugfest and a Congress-BJP tussle with communal overtones. Lost in the raucous tu-tu-mein-mein was the crux: Was the teenager a terrorist? There are no clear cut answers.

While the CBI asserts that the innocent youngster was killed merely because she was witness to her boss being taken away, the IB cites National Investigation Agency 2010 letter of 26/11 Mumbai master mind David Headley’s confession that Ishrat Jahan was a LeT suicide bomber. And accuses the former of perpetrating a “witch-hunt”, demoralizing officials and compromising national security imperatives.

Undeniably, if Jahan indeed was blameless it is a damning case of police and IB being hand in glove, not following the letter and spirit of the rule of law and smacks of human rights violation. As the Constitution reiterates even a terrorist should not be killed in cold blood. Both 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab and Parliament attacker Afzal Guru were prosecuted by the Courts and then hanged.

On the flip side, security experts aver the IB is a covert intelligence body and intelligence gathering a dangerous game requiring opacity. Any prosecution would set a bad precedent for counter terror operations thereby emboldening the State’s enemies.

Asserts a senior security official, “True, some individual fault lines might be there wherein an officer might abuse his responsibility of collecting, collating and decimating correct information. But he too is human and could make mistakes. Does that mean we hang him?”

Either which way, it holds out dangerous portends. The problem is not the investigative agencies but their week-kneed political masters who will politicize anything, deride institutions if it serves their interests.

With four Assembly and General Elections on the horizon the Congress has made the Jahan case into a Muslim vs. Hindu issue to swell its minority votes. Sending a strong signal that the Government will not do anything which may even remotely hurt the Muslim sentiment, terrorism or no terrorism. Plainly, this is appeasement at its crassest worst.

Arguably, the BJP is right when it asserts that the Centre and its UPA rulers have adopted double standards. Fake encounters are bad and unacceptable in Gujarat but right and much-needed in Punjab, Maharashtra, Kashmir etc.

In Punjab, during the 80’s Sikh militancy was snuffed out by hitting back with State terror. Today, KPS Gill who spearheaded the State terror is lauded as a hero and his advice eagerly sought. Between 1998-2000 Mumbai police’s special squads ‘cleaned up’ the 300-strong underworld with an average of 100 encounters a year. That is about eight a month.

The police went by the Israeli strategy of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The officers were feted as super-heroes. Bollywood even immortalized them in various films.

In Kashmir, Indian troops and police are known to commit atrocities day in and day out. Most Indians are shocked by this brazen brutality but accept it as an unavoidable part of the battle against militants.

Ditto is the case in West Bengal. In the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Naxalite movement threatened the State, both the ruling CPM and the Congress colluded in crushing the Naxals by counter State terror. In Nandigram too, the CPM has thumbed its nose at the rule of law and described it as “morally and legally” correct.

It is an open secret that the police time and again not only take recourse to third degree methods in order to extract truth from alleged criminals but also kills them with impunity. They are known to abuse power to dispense their own brand of rough and ready ‘justice’ on innocent persons, dubbed terrorists. This is abhorrent and unacceptable strictly from the human rights point of view and should be used only in extreme circumstances.

At the same time State terror can be justified so long as it for the greater common good. Former Punjab Governor, the late Dharma Vira was ever so right when under a spell of President’s rule during the height of Sikh militancy in the State he directed: “I have no use for live terrorists!” Indeed, the Kandhar fiasco would never have happened if only the three hijackers, Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar had been duly eliminated and not jailed. How does one draw a distinction between one fake encounter and another fake encounter? Is, the police more sinned against than sinning in dealing with ruthless terrorists who enjoy the advantage of choosing the target, the place and the time?

Alas, the Centre will continue to grope in the dark about how to deal with terrorism till it cries a halt to playing politics. The Government needs to be clear about its fundamentals and stop playing with fire vis-à-vis the country’s security apparatus. It has to respect the reputation of its intelligence wing and desist from giving a communal slant to every incident.

Intelligence watchers no doubt ascribe this to India’s multi-ethnic plurality. After all, whether Hindu or Muslim the ruler of Delhi has always viewed it in religious, castiest terms (Malegaon and Mecca Masjid cases in point) or engineered from across the border. If the CIA was to blame for all political debacles in the seventies and eighties, it is the ISI hand in everything nowadays.

Clearly, instead of getting into a political-intelligence slanging match it is vital that checks and balances are put in place to make it impossible for policemen and intelligence officials to be trigger-happy. Along-side, the IB still has to be protected and officers ensured immunity like in US, UK, France, Germany et al. The Bureau also needs to frame standard operating procedures on how to conduct covert terror operations.

However, beyond human frailties and fallibilities as we exhaust precious national energy, time and money on the Ishrat Jahan we should not loose sight of the larger issue of giving no quarter to terrorism, from across the border or Naxalites. Else we will only prove Acharya Kriplani right: He described Indians as the world’s biggest hypocrites and humbugs. What gives? [INFA]